Current public discussion of the crucial need to contain hospital costs is rarely informed by an historical perspective beyond the most recent three decades, yet the American voluntary hospital had virtually assumed its present form by 1900. The Federal government recognized the importance of the emergent hospital industry in 1910; the Bureau of Census performed an extensive, detailed survey of the nation's hospitals. Regretably, the findings have never been studied or incorporated into our usable memory. This project will code them into a unique, computerized data base which will be descriptively analyzed to develop an understanding of the nascent hospital sector in the context of medical, social and political history. Statistical analysis will attempt to determine sources of the regional variations in distribution, utilization, and cost of hospital services in the early 20th century, with comparisons to recent variations in these parameters. Project objectives have been formulated through several dozen specific research questions. Cross tabulation will be performed on all generic information to obtain, for example, the relationship of class of control to relative admissions of private and charity patients and to relative contributions from varied sources of income. Figures such as those for operating and capital expenditures will be similarly examined and also related to state and regional socioeconomic variables including population, numbers of physicians and medical schools, personal income, and indices of the degree of urbanization and industrialization. The whole effort should provide significant insights into the structure and function of both the early and contemporary hospital industry. Elucidation of the dimensions of continuity between past and present provision of inpatient care would be a real contribution to the design of constructive public policy regarding hospital finance.